Having the general proposition clearly in mind, the management investigator can go after his facts. Observation and experiment will be required to enable him to select the facts and, from conclusions drawn from them, to formulate those laws by which he can select his machines, material and men. Some laws will become standards by which the workingmen in any particular department may be scientifically se lected. The men who are physically or temperamen tally unfit to perform the duties in a particular de partment may be taken out and fitted into some other place more suited to their particular abilities. Such a redistribution of men results in a total increase of efficiency without drawing forth more labor energy from men and machines. The results will show not only that a scientific method has been used, but that a scientific ob ject has been obtained.
7. Continual study and progress.—The first prac tical rule in the application of this scientific method of adapting the instrument to purpose, demands not only a redistribution of responsibilities but the establish ment of intimate cooperation between managers and men.- This may be called the rule of sympathetic co operation, in which there is "mutual recognition of the possibility of mutual helpfulness." An example of this practice is seen in those shops where the chief distribution of functions consists of dividing the purely mechanical and muscular operations from those requiring brain and effort, and then select ing men who are particularly fitted for each kind of work. This division and redistribution of the func tions necessitates a greater degree of planned cooper ation between the two groups than was essential under the old style of management. Under the old system the workman was left to determine the method of doing his work as well as to do it. Under the system where the function of planning is separated from the performance, the method is given into the hands of an expert body of planners and the workmen are left free to apply all their energy to the one thing—the doing of the work.
Present-day management, however, does not stop with experiments alone. It requires that the facts, having once been obtained, should be used for the con tinual advancement of the organization. The first rule for the practical administration of the laws and principles which have been deduced should be the se lection of proper instructors to teach the men upon whom the production of the plant depends. Under this rule, a workman, once selected and assigned to a duty to which he is especially adapted, is kept at his highest point of efficiency by being continually helped and taught how best to do his work. The factory thus ceases to be a "mill" and becomes a school instead.
A law is limited by the circumstances which condi tion it. Before any specific devices are discussed by
which the direction of a business enterprise may be changed from a "hit and miss" sort of management to a system of carefully studied control and direction, it may be well to throw out the following caution. Altho a law, once formulated, is fixed by the condi- I' tions which gave rise to it, there is no assurance that the conditions will not change. In fact, conditions are ever shifting and, as a consequence, new observations and new experiments will result in the derivation of new laws. No manager should assume that any con elusion he may reach is final. A rule of action which may guide the organization today to higher planes of efficiency may later be rendered obsolete by a new set of conditions and higher standards of accomplishment. The manager who approaches his sub ject in the spirit of a scientist never stops because a cost has been reduced. Nothing is final with him. He is ever on the lookout for the possibility of further reductions and the discovery of new and important laws by which these reductions may be made.
8. What the science of management involves.—A science of management involves a natural force, an in ductive method of study, and a distribution and group ing of activities according to functions.
One of the great difficulties in getting business men to see that management is anything more than just "cominon sense," is their disinclination to listen to any thing which smacks of theory or principles. They as sume that common sense deals with concrete things while theory deals with abstractions. The truth is that common sense is not dissociated from theory. The thing which people call common sense is simply the working out of a theory or principle Ulm con crete things. When the phenomena, are familiar and when the causes and effects are in harmony with ordi nary experience, they are spoken of as simply com mon sense. The trouble arises when a man mis takes the illustration, of a fact or principle for the principle itself, and thinks he has dodged all re sponsibility for thoroness of investigation and care fulness in recording and studying data, by calling the whole thing simply a question of common sense. To the janitor the putting of salt on an icy sidewalk is simply a question of common sense; to the chemist it is a question of chemical affinity. To the ordinary "boss" the following example taken from Mr. F. W. Taylor's experience will appeal only as a common sense thing to do; to the manager looking foy truths by which he may guide his own endeavors, there will appear the great problem of the saving of labor power, the inductive principle of investigation and a never-ceasing struggle to attain new standards of ef ficiency—there being no assumption of finality in the derivation of laws.